For two weeks now Janette and I have been hearing the tall tales of how glorious the crystal clear waters at the top of Forest Falls are.
“The pools are deep enough to swim.”
“There are trout aplenty to catch!”
“Unicorns dwell here!”
Okay maybe not the unicorn part but our friends Noah and Rick make it seem like the pools are a real Shang Ra La.
Both of these guys have told us they would help us find the pools in the last few weeks and the plans never seem to work out.
Noah told us that to get to the top of the falls you take the trail that starts at the bottom of the falls where all the tourists hang out on Sundays. ( We did this hike on a Sunday and no joke, when we started our falls hike at eleven a.m. the parking lot was full; there had to be at least one hundred cars parked in the spots, in the gravel and choking the road side. In heat thick Southern California Forest Falls is a very popular destination.
Noah told us the trail starts next to a tree.
A tree? Really? Do you have any idea how many trees are in a forest? This advice would come to not be very useful.
At eleven a.m., Janette and I strap on our water hardy creek shoes, and my Zenith ankle brace (find this product on Amazon) and head down stream from the families picnicking and the teenagers drinking beer. We are trying to find the trail head. We are trying to find “the tree” We really did not think we were going to find the trail on this summer day so we did not wear our hiking boots. Our foot wear was very inconvenient for the hike that was about to happen.
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| This was how dirty my foot and ankle brace were after the hike. |
We are moseying down stream when I see it! I see a tree! It’s a huge oak tree that fell and yeah, it looks like a land mark of some kind. It must be
“The tree!”
There looks like there might kind of be a path going up the mountain from the tree so Janette and I start climbing up the shale covered mountain. It’s super slow going and we are holding on to roots and boulders to pull ourselves up the mountain as our shoes have no grip what so ever and are no help at all.
After we are up from the creek about forty feet, I look at the trail that is barely even a trail at all and ask her,
“Do you want to keep going?”
We decide yes, this might be the trail and we know it is heading in the right direction so lets go for it. We keep climbing the side of the mountain so very slowly in our water shoes. Down below we can hear kids in the creek, splashing and giggling. They sound like they are having a good time as we sweat in the sun, shoulder muscles burning from the exertion of pulling ourselves up a sandy path that is really not a path at all.
This whole time we are cursing the names of Rick and Noah.
“Damn you Rick! Why could you have not shown us the easy way to do this hike!?”
About sixty feet up the mountain we come to a saddle across the back bone of the mountain and a trail! As in a real trail that goes over the ridge line of the mountain!
I am exuberant.
?
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| The view looking over the falls |
Janette is exhausted. All she had was trail mix for breakfast and she needs some protein to power through. We stop for a snack of Salmon Salad and crackers and than power up the mountain.
?? The trail keeps going up and up and up and at some point I look over one of the shear drop off edges and realize that I can see the top of the falls we hiked to last week forty feet below us! I look down at the people frolicking in the cold waters and I think, it is so crazy that they have no idea we are up here!
??
The views from this hike are truly amazing. I can look across from us and the little hamlet towns of Forest falls and Mountain Home are hundreds of feet below us.
Rick had made it sound like the pools were at the very, very top of this mountain but once we are about two hundred feet up the mountain side I see two small trials going down to little pool areas and we are running short on time so we decide this is as far as we will come today.
We make our way down to the cold water and the clear water is pure snow run off. It is freezing and my legs ache standing in it for more than a few minutes but we don’t care. We splash around in the water and than hike up the streams and falls a few minutes until a forest of poison oak cuts us off.
These pools are pretty awesome but I have a feeling we did not even make it to the glorious area we were looking for today. We are out of time however and after splashing ourselves silly we head back down the mountain. I turn on my GPS tracking as we leave, something I should have done on the way up. Not using my GPS will turn out to be a huge mistake.
Right after we start down the mountain we lose the trail completely. However we are not lost in any way. We can see the town of Forest Falls and the car parked way, way below us so as long as we just head down the mountain we will be fine.
At this point I am so mad at myself that I did not turn on the GPS on the hike up; if I had we could have just looked at the map and got ourselves back to the trail, so easy!
Yet there is no trail any where and we end up at one point just sliding down the mountain on our asses.
I really wish I was not wearing yoga shorts.
I feel like I will be picking pebbles out of my butt cheeks for weeks.
I love Janette she is such a trooper. I do not know if I have another friend who would have put up with me and this hike today. Especially the way down, which I’m not going to lie, is terrible.
We have sharp pieces of nature stuck in our palms as we grasp for hand holds as we slide on our butts down the sand and shale covered mountain side.
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| Jannette on the way down the mountain |
I can’t believe we made it to the bottom with out getting to hurt.
Oh I’m not going to lie, my butt was cut to hell from the rocks and shale and I had gashes all over my legs and ankles but we did eventually make it down the mountain in one piece.
I might not be wearing a bikini for a while until my ass heals.
Believe me when our feet touched the sand at the bottom of the mountain and we waded into the little creek that flows at the bottom, washing all the mud out of our water shoes, we were so fucking happy we made it down that mountain in one piece.
Salmon Salad
1 can of salmon
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1-2 tab lemon juice
I use Greek yogurt in this salad instead of mayo so it is great to take hiking and picnicking and not have to worry about the mayo spoiling.